Palin stretches truth in campaign speeches
Published Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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Stumble It!JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells audiences the election is about the "truthfulness and judgment" needed to be president. But the Alaska governor often stretches the truth herself.
She has exaggerated the nature of Barack Obama's personal ties to a former 1960s radical and falsely claimed the Democratic presidential candidate plans to raise most people's taxes.
On Tuesday, she tried rebutting the Illinois senator's criticisms of Republican presidential candidate John McCain over health care and Social Security. She said Obama was misleading and wrong, but she herself told less than the full story.
To be sure, most of Palin's assertions about Obama echo claims McCain himself has made or lines from Republican TV ads.
At a rally Tuesday, Palin tried to link Obama to the failure of housing giant Fannie Mae by noting that two Obama supporters once led the troubled company. The government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another housing finance company, last month to prevent their collapse from worsening the global credit crisis.
"What's next, claiming that he didn't know two of his biggest supporters were running Fannie Mae, the subprime mortgage giant?" Palin said. "That has done harm to the American economy."
She referred to Jim Johnson, who chaired Fannie Mae from 1991-1998, and Franklin Raines, his successor who stepped down in 2004 in an accounting scandal.
But Palin exaggerated Obama's ties to Raines and Johnson while omitting any mention of a closer relationship between a top McCain aide and the failed housing giants.
Raines and Johnson support Obama but do not have strong ties to him or his campaign. Johnson briefly headed Obama's vice presidential search last spring but resigned amid controversy over loans he got with help from an executive of Countrywide Financial Corp., a lender damaged by the mortgage meltdown.
Meanwhile, until August, Freddie Mac paid $15,000 a month to a lobbying firm headed by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. The payment came on top of more than $30,000 a month Davis was paid directly by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2000-2005 to head the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group.
Davis has not taken any compensation from his lobbying firm since 2006, the McCain campaign said.
Palin has made other questionable assertions:
-She suggests Obama was disrespectful of U.S. soldiers when he said U.S. troops in Afghanistan were just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."
The partial quote is misleading. The Illinois senator said once, in August 2007, when pressing to send more troops to Afghanistan: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops" so they aren't just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."
Shortly before his comment, an Associated Press analysis showed that more civilians in Afghanistan had been killed by Western forces than by militants.
-Her claim that Obama would raise most people's taxes. "The phoniest claim in a campaign that's full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes," she tells supporters.
Obama has promised a tax cut for those making less than $250,000 per year - about 90 percent of all taxpayers. Only those making over $250,000 would get tax increases under Obama's proposal.
McCain has pledged not to raise any taxes.
Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane, Palin defended her tough talk. When asked if whether her claims suggest Obama is dishonest, Palin said, "I'm not saying he's dishonest. But in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to this - that judgment and that truthfulness."
At a fundraiser Tuesday, Palin also pushed back against an Obama TV ad suggesting McCain's health care plan would force employers to drop coverage for millions.
"Every middle class American family will have a $5,000 credit, tax credit, to buy the health care coverage that you choose and Barack Obama's calling that a tax," Palin said. "I don't know how he can capture this and spin it into being a tax on Americans. No, it is a credit."
In fact, McCain's plan would tax health care benefits people receive from employers in order to finance the $5,000 tax credit. Obama's ads argue the new tax would raise the cost of insurance for employers, forcing millions off the rolls.
In the journal Health Affairs, economists projected McCain's plan would lead 20 million people to lose employer-sponsored insurance, while 21 million people would gain coverage through the individual market.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found McCain's tax credit would be more generous than the current tax break initially but could fall behind in later years. The center also found his plan would increase the deficit by $1.3 trillion over 10 years.
Palin also defended McCain against an Obama campaign TV ad on Social Security that began running last month in Florida and elsewhere. The ad says McCain supported Bush's plan to privatize Social Security and claims McCain supports cutting Social Security benefits in half and "risking Social Security on the stock market."
Palin disputed that.
"We will protect the retirement programs that Americans depend on, above all Social Security," Palin said. "No presidential election cycle is complete ... without the Democratic candidate coming down here to Florida especially and trying to stir up fear and panic on this issue of Social Security."
McCain did support Bush's unsuccessful Social Security plan to allow current workers to voluntarily divert some of their Social Security taxes into private stock accounts. Now, McCain says "nothing is off the table" in ensuring the soundness of the program. But none of what McCain supported would apply to current Social Security recipients.
The benefit cut comes from a separate Bush provision that would have changed how benefits keep up with inflation; independent analysts concluded this change could cut benefits by 50 percent for higher income beneficiaries who retire in 2080.
Community Discussion
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Sarah Palin criticizing someone else for not being forthcoming and truthful when answering a question would be funny if it wasn't so sad. She was obviously trained very well during her cram session in Arizona preparing for the VP debate. She has become just another dishonest mouthpiece for the pary line. What a shame.
"Stretches truth?" How about outright lies? And incessant repetition of outright lies even when presented with the truth?
And some people claim the media is liberally biased. Wow.
Our li'l beauty queen is doing her job so well! Aren't we Alaskans proud now? Bless her heart! <sarcasm>
Beauty pageants are all about artificial appearance, popularity, rehearsal - making someone into something 'desirable' at any cost. Palin started training young. And politics is different only because the competitors are vying for control of the sheeple's lives, not just a sash and crown. Palin knows exactly what she's doing as she postures, proselytizes, winks, waves and lies her way into the good graces of the World Management Team...
Oh dear, this article is so full of so many things I could take issue with that I hardly know where to start. So I'll just shut up and say that I can't understand how this person, who used to come across as so honest and forthright, can fill her mouth with the crap she's been fed, spew it out to the masses, and live with the puppet that she's become. She's trashed her entire political career. What a shame.
The more I hear Palin speak the more I hear George Bush talking. She must have taken lessons from him in obfuscation and evasion.
This article is abject garbage. "Misleading Obama camp talking points" would have been a much better headline. I can assure you that I have purchased my last FDNM and when reading other folks copies I will take note of the advertisers and treat them accordingly.
So, you're saying, Roadtrip, that it's acceptable for a candidate to lie and mislead the American people, as long as it's a candidate you support?
Obama lies and misleads so it is politics as usual. I do hate to see it from our Governor. But then again I hate Dobie's. And I sure do hate liberals and their agenda.
Pat
What I'm saying is this article is a piece of opinionated, yellow journalism, crap and as the DNM chose to regurgitate it I will consider it to be their very own words.
Roadtrip, you're still reading the DNM aren't you? If you don't like it don't read. Plus, I say if it's true it's true and if your candidate is lying about certain things I want to know about it. Thanks DNM.
Obama has run an extraordinarily honest campaign. He has put out a few ads that, while not lying outright, misrepresent or oversimplify some policy issue, or use some favorable statistic that most experts disagree with. But MOST of Obama's ads have been 100% truthful, as have the things that come out of his own mouth as a candidate.
Obama mixes positive and negative ads, mostly positive, and the negative ads he does run are all about policy (never character) and are mostly fair attacks. McCain right now is running 100% negative ads -- literally, not a single positive ad on the airwaves at the moment -- and they're mostly lying character attacks. And Sarah Palin's speeches are even worse than their ads. She doesn't have an honest bone in her body. She's all ambition and giggles... no morals, no brains.
Obama's campaign is guilty of occasionally overreaching with spin, as is every campaign, but McCain's campaign right now is a liar eating a lie-burger driving a lie-mobile off a cliff into an ocean of lies.
You guys watch the debate? Did anyone other than me notice that Lord Obama confused the development of the computer with the development of the Internet? Pretty simple stuff.
Barak Obama does plenty of his own "truth-stretching" though you'll never see it reported by the "Assassination(Associated) Press" or their Alaska Hit Team.
http://www.factcheck.org/just-the-facts/...
http://www.factcheck.org/just-the-facts/...
Now, politicians stretching the truth as they promise " a chicken in every pot" is nothing new; but these daily hit pieces by the Assassination Press along with their tabloidish headlines (that are obviously directed at smearing the governor) make the DNM look good only next to the National Enquirer.
Here's the bottom line whether Republicans want to admit it or not. The American public is not interested in hearing about Obama's past affiliations when he was eight years old. You can try to bring the Weather Underground as much as you want. You can try to make it as a big deal as you want. But the bottom line is, people aren't interested. Poll after poll, and now we're into three debates, but everything is showing that it's not working.
The American people want to know how the next president is going to fix the economy. Once again, poll after poll, have shown this is the biggest question on everyone's mind.
This sort of thing, trying to link Obama to extremists, might work on this message board. But just about everywhere else in the country this tactic is failing miserably. The cold hard answer is Obama will win this election unless McCain changes the core fundamentals of his campaign. I am originally from Columbus, Ohio and I can tell you from watching our last gubernatorial election that **negative campaigns do not work today**. They didn't work then and they won't work for McCain now.
Sorry Republicans but this is how it is. You'd better hope McCain completely changes it around very, very soon.
She only says what she is told. Poor thing, she's ruining her political future. Today she came really close to insiting a riot, where angry white guys were yelling "Kill him" about Obama. She's mixed up in the wrong crowd and will never recover from what is happening to her "brand".
obama is bad news, you need to be listening to things that don't get put in this bias newspaper. He has admitted that he is muslim, he has ties to terrorist, he is friends with a guy that tells children to kill their parents. He wants to take the guns away from everyone but the criminals. He said he would have his grandchildren killed, he has voted three times that if a baby is born alive that it is ok to leave it lay in some closet until it dies. He is no friend to the people of this country. And this newspaper is not the only media that is bias, most of the news media is very bias.
"obama is bad news, you need to be listening to things that don't get put in this bias newspaper. He has admitted that he is muslim, he has ties to terrorist, he is friends with a guy that tells children to kill their parents. He wants to take the guns away from everyone but the criminals. He said he would have his grandchildren killed, he has voted three times that if a baby is born alive that it is ok to leave it lay in some closet until it dies. He is no friend to the people of this country. And this newspaper is not the only media that is bias, most of the news media is very bias."
-------
lol
Obama is ultra liberal and for this campaign he is pretending to be a moderate.
Oh crap, I meant Lord Obama.
Where's the article about Joe's out an out lying about his record, and lying about the record of his running mate, the former community organizer Obama?
Nobody, least of all the AP, knows the extent of the connection between Ayers and Obama. That is because Obama has not been forthcoming, and the media has cooperated. There have been excellent articles in the National Review about Obama's past affiliations. As much as can be discerned considering all of the secrecy surrounding the man who would like to be president.
This article assumes that Obama tax cuts are actually forthcoming, and people will not be effected by corporation's and small businesses having to raise prices and cut employees.
Beth Fouhy writes a great editorial. As a news reporter, she sucks.
It doesn't matter what kind of connection Obama had or has with Ayres now. The man is a professor now, not a terrorist. When he committed his crimes (in which nobody was ever killed), Obama was eight years old! Obama has said that he does not condone violence of any kind, (except for the escalation of troops in Afghanistan, that is, but many Americans don't seem to have a problem with that kind of violence).
I am not a proponent of violence in any way, (except in self-defense), including the violent, terrorist actions the US carried on in Vietnam, killing over three million innocent people, including 60,000 innocent US soldiers. It was a slaughter based on the lies told about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Slaughtering millions of people based on lies. Sound familiar?! Many Americans were distraught at our government's actions in Vietnam, including me. I was a Christian teenager of a Marine dad at the time, having been raised on God and Semper Fi. It was a eye-opening, life-changing event for me. It boggled my mind that my country and my church, which were beacons of human rights with Jesus on our side, would condone the slaughter so many innocent people who had done nothing to us. It was major moral conflict when I realized in my heart back then that Jesus would never condone what America was doing. It changed a lot of Americans' opinion of our nation. I still believe America was wrong to invade Vietnam, just like I believe they were wrong to invade Iraq and murder over a million people there. I thought we would have learned by now about invading and occupying nations who aren't a threat to us, but when there is so much profit to be made by defense contractors and big oil, I guess the profiteers just can't resist. And besides, we're not just a nation anymore. We're an empire, and that's what empires do. Right before they collapse. When all of the money goes to support the empire, the nation collapses, just like ours is doing now. We don't have money for health care, but we sure have money for wealth care and war care!
In response to Palin's finger pointing at Obama's association with terrorists who "hate America," Keith Olberman brought up Joe Vogler and the Palins' association with the Alaska Independence Party. Remember when Joe said, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their damn flag. I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."? In these days and times, Joe would be considered an enemy of the state. Maybe he was back then too. He was murdered before he was due to speak at the UN about Alaska's secession. So, is Palin fit to be VP after pallin' around with America-haters in the AIP?
doris---
To compare the AIP with the Weather Underground is like comparing Bob Dylan to Charlie Manson. Both starred in the 60s and influenced young people. One spoke of ideas, was completely legal and respected. The other was full of hate and violence, a toxic by product of the era. One was an agent of change, the other was about sex, drugs, and murder.
Your justification of Bill Ayers is a reflection of either confusion on your part or a deep hatred of the USA. I dont care if the former community organizer Obama was 2 weeks old when the Weather Underground declared war on the USA. The alliance and friendship and political partnership is much more recent, along with relationships with Wright, and Pflager, and Khalidi, and ACORN, and Alinsky. If you were truly a peace loving non-violent person you would be outraged by Bill Ayers, and the history he and Obama share.
While many have died in Iraq, you are the first I've heard say a million. Can you back that up?
Does your Christian faith condone the bombing that Ayers did? The Weather Underground did indeed murder Americans with their bombs, so you should consider that in your self-righteous equation.
Finally, while I would listen to Keith Olbermann talk about baseball, which he does well, he knows nothing about this country, except how much he hates W and all Republicans. He is absurd.
Doris - you seem rather clueless about the Weathermen, therefore, I'm linking you to the layman's version of their reign of terror:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_...)
Ironically, if they could have, they might have murdered your father for being a Marine. Ayers was finally caught when a bomb that he designed blew up his compadres who were plotting to bomb a service club at Fort Dix.
So, I wonder, if Timothy McVeigh got off on a technicality and went on to become a school teacher at some college, would you feel so hunky dory about it? Afterall, he had grievances against the federal government, too.
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